Remarketing List

How is it built?

[ember]

Granted, I don't know much about this, but I thought when someone comes to a page with the remarketing tag on it, then that person is added to the remarketing list. Over time, the list grows, say for 30 days, 60 days, whatever. The people on the list are the ones shown my ad when they visit another site in the display network. A Google rep just told me that to be added to the remarketing list, a person has to visit my site and then visit another related site. Once he has visited these two sites, then he is added to the remarketing list. Does that make sense? My list has stopped growing and I am trying to find out why.

[RhinoFish]

Sounds like the Rep misunderstood you. Given the duration setting, like 30 days, are people dropping off as fast as you are adding them? In AdWords, when you drill into the Audience, the graph of list size has flattened - is that what you mean by "stopped growing"?

[ember]

Yes, the graph of the list size has flattened. The duration is set to 90 days. This site is small, only gets about 500 visitors a day, but I figured about 500 people a day would be added to the list for 90 days and then the list would flatten. It started out adding people at a steady clip, and then it just stopped. The rep said everything looked fine and the tag is working.

[RhinoFish]

You can build lists of people who hit the home page, any page, the add to cart page, the receipt page, the contact us form page... what pages did you include in your list?

I always like to build an "All 007" list, duration of 7 days, URL contains "/".
No matter where the landed and left, there on the list.

I like to build clones of that, with durations of 3, 15, 30, 60, 90, 180, 365, and 540 days.

I do the same for home page, category page, product page, cart page, receipt page.

So I can do this... cart007 - receipt007 = abandoned cart in last 7 days. Chase them hard.
cart030 - receipt030 - cart007 = abandoned cart in last 8 to 30 days. Chase them, but not as hard.

Since all lists level out in size, once the number of new people being added equals the number of aged people dropping off the list, I can look at my 003 lists to confirm that new people are being added. On any 540 list, if something is broken, it's hard to see the list shrinking - the duration is so long, you only lose 1/540th per day. But on a 003 day duration list, if it breaks (or your traffic stops), you'll lose 1/3rd of your list for the next 3 days. 003 day lists are like canaries in a coal mine. :-)

[ember]

Thank you for the insights. Once I figure out why the list has flattened and is now declining, I'll look into getting more creative.